Michelle Teheux: Can you trust a scientist or study results?

We tend to think if a lot of smart people with doctorates have spent a few million bucks studying something, that their conclusions ought to be pretty reliable. So why aren’t they?

Michelle Teheux

I can’t decide if it’s stupidity or a conspiracy. Why, oh why, would scientists repeatedly go through all the trouble of doing a study that they know — or should know — is set up in such a way that the results are a foregone conclusion?

What’s set me off this time is a news story about the latest study disproving the effectiveness of the herb echinacea.

I’m a big believer in echinacea, otherwise known as the purple coneflower you might have growing in your flower garden. It’s native to North America and has been used for hundreds of years by native people.

I discovered it some years ago in a prepared cold medicine and later learned how to harvest and prepare a tincture myself, back when I had a little more time to putter about with such things.

When my daughter was 7, we took a nature walk in Forest Park Nature Center in Peoria, Ill. The naturalist pointed out the purple coneflower, and my daughter told him, “That’s echinacea. It’s good for colds.”

Indeed it is, but like any sort of medicine, it has to be used the right way. Any armchair herbalist knows that if echinacea is to do any good at all, it must be taken at the very first sign of a cold. You know that “Hmm, I wonder if I’m coming down with something” feeling? That’s when you start taking echinacea. Wait until your cold has arrived with a vengeance and you have waited too long.

But every news story I have seen in recent years has explained how researchers first identified people who have full-blown colds, have given them echinacea and then have soberly reported that their colds were not cured. But no expert worth his or her weight in dried herbs would expect that approach to work anyway.

The problem is, like most people, I have little pockets of expertise here and there, but I am by no means an expert in everything. Most of the time, I would like to accept that if experts say they have studied something and the results are in, that those results mean something.

But I’m disheartened by the number of poorly done studies I’ve seen on those handful of subjects on which I’m knowledgeable enough to have an informed opinion. I’m thinking here about a company-sponsored study that found no difference in the allergy rate of breastfed and formula-fed infants. I saw how they managed to get those results when I looked deeper and discovered they did not actually compare breastfed versus formula-fed babies. Instead, they made a useless comparison between a group of babies who had been breastfed even once but were also receiving formula versus babies who were totally formula-fed.

Nobody ever claimed that giving a formula-fed baby a few servings of breast milk would keep him or her from developing allergies. Well-done studies do, however, show that exclusively breastfed babies are less likely to develop allergies.

Parents hoping to protect their babies from developing allergies were likely to come away from that study thinking, “I guess it doesn’t matter whether or not I nurse,” instead of the correct interpretation of, “It looks like if I want to help protect my baby from the allergies in our family, I need to make sure my baby is exclusively breastfed with no formula supplementation.”

How can I trust that all those other studies on which we’re all depending aren’t half-baked?

I can’t. And that’s how you get experts disagreeing on all sorts of things. Scientist A says the Earth is warming. Scientist B says it’s not. Scientist C pronounces a low-carb diet to be the healthiest. Scientist D counters that with a study that reveals low-fat diets are better.

As a result, nobody believes anything. Good studies are lumped in with bad studies. It’s part of why someone can say with a straight face, “Oh, according to half the scientists, even drinking water can cause cancer,” and then light up a cigarette without worries.

We tend to think if a lot of smart people with doctorates have spent a few million bucks studying something, that their conclusions ought to be pretty reliable. So why aren’t they?

Editor Michelle Teheux may be reached at mteheux@pekintimes.com. The views expressed in this column are not necessarily those of the Pekin Daily Times.

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